


Keith Kogane: Nerd Avenger

by GriffinRose



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, High School, I'm Disappointed in You all, M/M, Meet-Cute, No Proofreading We Die Like Men, Not Beta Read, Pre-Relationship, Swimmer Lance (Voltron), That's not a tag, bad boy keith, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 00:13:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15206576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GriffinRose/pseuds/GriffinRose
Summary: There was a pattern to the people notorious bad boy Keith Kogane sent to the nurse’s office.When his friends keep ending up on the wrong side of Kogane's fists for no apparent reason, Lance gets curious. (And okay, maybe a little obsessive). He finds the punches aren't actually random. Kogane just isn't fighting for himself. He's fighting on behalf of every other person in the school, apparently.





	Keith Kogane: Nerd Avenger

There was a pattern to the people notorious bad boy Keith Kogane sent to the nurse’s office.

 

It seemed almost coincidental. At first, that’s all Lance thought it was. Just karma coming around to knock in the heads of his friends.

 

It had been an easy assumption to make. Keith Kogane didn’t have friends. He sat alone at lunch. He stalked through the halls with a scowl on his face. He punched more people in a week than most people even knew. He was the person people told Lance to avoid when he moved to town two weeks into October. Which made sense. Lance was quite happy to press himself against the lockers and let Keith Kogane walk right past him in the halls.

 

Kogane never seemed to look at him, so Lance’s strategy was working.

 

Transferring into a new school a month into junior year was hard enough without making enemies with the person guaranteed to put him in the hospital. Lance was just lucky he made friends so easily. He also had the benefit of no one here knowing about his awkward preteen years, and he was able to start over fresh as the cool loverboy he was always meant to be.

 

(Hunk always laughed hysterically when Lance facetimed him to talk about the girls that surrounded him at all times.)

 

Leaving Hunk behind in sunny Florida was the only downside to his family’s relocation to South Carolina. But when his father was offered a job transfer with better pay and benefits and his mother found a job in the same city, well. Boxes were packed faster than Lance could blink.

 

He and Hunk were still on track to go to the same college, and they facetimed constantly, but he still felt the loss throughout the day. His new friends helped though. They welcomed him with open arms, laughed at his jokes, and he had a date two weeks after his first day. Things could be worse.

 

As long as he stayed off Kogane’s radar, he was golden.

 

The first two months, it seemed like Kogane had it out for Lance’s new friends. He went up to Derek, the captain of the swim team, with no warning before tryouts, and slugged him across the face so hard Derek actually spun around before collapsing against the wall. And then Kogane walked away without a word.

 

Lance had watched the whole thing from down the hall. Kogane never looked at him. Derek and their other friends cursed Kogane’s name, and he had a black eye until Christmas.

 

In the time leading up to Christmas, Kogane also decked Tristan, Kyle, and Harry in the same drive-by slugging fashion.

 

It was absolutely terrifying.

 

Possibly more terrifying was when he went after the girls. He wouldn’t punch them, at least. Instead he’d walk up to them and dump a bottle of water over their heads, which always sent them into shrieking hysterics.

 

Lance spied one of those ‘attacks,’ too. It had seemed kind of pointless at the time; all his friends were on the swim team and they were about to head into practice, where they would get wet anyway.

 

“What is his problem?” Lance muttered, arms around Chelsea while she recovered, wet hair pressing into his shirt.

 

“He’s fucking insane,” Chelsea said. She wiped the water off her face with her hand and flicked it away from herself.

 

It was the silent way Kogane attacked that freaked him out. That and the fact he didn’t seem to be looking for an actual fight. He got in his one punch and then left, like he’d accomplished all he set out to do.

 

He was still thinking about it at lunch the next day, stabbing a spork into questionable cafeteria spaghetti over and over. “How does he even pick his targets?” Lance asked. “It’s not like you guys even talk to him.”

 

“I told you,” Chelsea said, spearing a pathetic piece of lettuce. “He’s fucking insane.”

 

“Okay but how come he never gets suspended or anything?” That had been bothering Lance, too. Kogane might strike after school, but it was still on school grounds. There were still security cameras in the halls, and Kogane made no effort to be subtle. His friends also reported his attacks to the nurse. It didn’t make sense.

 

“He has in school suspension like every other day,” Harry said. “And he’s always got detention after school.”

 

That explained why Kogane was even still around during swim practice, at least.

 

“I say we take a stand,” Lance said. “He shouldn’t be allowed to keep getting away with this.”

 

“I agree with Lance,” Chelsea said. “If we don’t stand up and say something, who will?”

 

“That sounds great but what are we supposed to do?” Derek asked. “March into Principal Alfor’s office and demand he expel him?”

 

“We could make a petition!” Sally suggested. “If we give Principal Alfor a list of people who want Kogane gone, he’s got to see that _something_ is wrong!”

 

And that was how they started a petition to get Kogane expelled from school. Which Lance felt a little bad about. He wouldn’t want to know a bunch of people disliked him enough to actually sign something to get him kicked out. But he couldn’t stand to see his friends keep getting hurt, either.

 

It turned out less people wanted Kogane kicked out than Lance would have expected. He went with Derek around their shared study hall and could only get two signatures from some freshmen. One of the kids they asked outright scoffed at them.

 

“There’s no way in hell I’m signing that.”

 

“Come on, Benny,” Derek said. “Kogane could cream a dorky nerd like you in two seconds if he wanted to.”

 

Benny frowned and narrowed his eyes. “Y’know, insulting me really isn’t going to help your case.”

 

That was a fair point, Lance thought. “Look, Benny. Kogane keeps hurting my friends. We’re downright terrified of the guy. Aren’t you?”

 

“Maybe he keeps hurting them because they deserve it,” Benny snapped. “And for your information, no, I’m not scared of him.” He slammed his pre-calc book shut and abruptly stood from his desk.

 

He and Derek let Benny switch seats, and then they returned to their own, completely baffled. They met up with Chelsea and Kyle after class, before the last period of the day. They’d had the same luck.

 

“Even Wide-load Martin wouldn’t sign!” Kyle complained. “Like, c’mon! All the people Kogane could probably kill with his punches should be all over this petition!”

 

Chelsea nodded next to him.

 

“I don’t get it!” Derek said, running both hands wildly through his hair. He grabbed a kid at random, a short girl with her hair in a side-ponytail.

 

“Hey, let go of me!” she said.

 

“Would you sign a petition to get Keith Kogane kicked out of our school?”

 

“What? No, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of,” she said. She tried to wrench her arm free.

 

“Why not?” Derek demanded. “He could stuff a puny know-it-all freak like you in a locker and we’d never find your body!”

 

The girl finally got her arm free, her face quickly reddening. “He has no reason to, and at least _he_ doesn’t go around calling people puny know-it-all freaks!” She stomped on Derek’s foot and stormed off.

 

Lance thought he saw tears.

 

“Alright, you might have deserved that one,” Kyle said, patting Derek on the back.

 

“Yeah, I guess that was too far,” Derek admitted. “I’m just…so confused. Does no one else see the terror he is?”

 

“Maybe we should start asking around about what other people think of him before we go any further with this petition,” Lance suggested. It seemed like the rest of the school knew a different Keith Kogane, and Lance was starting to feel like they were missing something.

 

Derek came to school the next day with two black eyes and a broken nose. When everyone appropriately freaked out, all he said was “Kogane.”

 

“Dude must have gotten word about the petition,” Harry said. They were all gathered in their usual morning spot in front of the locker rooms.

 

It was an obvious assumption. It renewed their determination to get the guy kicked out of their school.

 

They got as far as they did yesterday. People rolled their eyes at the petition. Benny in study hall took the petition and turned it into confetti in front of their faces.

 

Kogane was absent, serving out of school suspension for the rest of the week for breaking Derek’s nose.

 

Lance laid stretched out on one of the bleachers with the other male swimmers while the girls swam their laps in the pool. Derek gingerly touched the bruising around his eyes.

 

“Maybe the rest of the school is just too afraid of Kogane to sign the petition,” Kyle suggested.

 

Lance considered it. The people who scoffed at the petition didn’t seem scared. Eye rolling and confetti-making weren’t signs of fear. They genuinely didn’t believe in the petition.

 

Why?

 

His theory started the next week, when Kogane was back in class. He still thought about the girl Derek had grabbed in the hall a lot, and that was the only reason he even made this connection. He shared gym class with Kyle, and their current unit was baseball.

 

The kid currently up to bat, Kiernan, was another junior, part of the school play if Lance remembered correctly. He’d already struck out twice, which was impressive when their teacher pitched underhand about ten feet from the plate and allowed five strikes. When Kiernan picked up the bat and walked over to the plate, Kyle made a comment about using this as a chance for a nap.

 

The rest of the outfield had snickered. Kiernan turned as red as his hair. Their teacher made Kyle run a lap around the field to dissuade any nap time ideas.

 

The next day, Kyle had a black eye.

 

It was a wild idea to connect the two events. But the more Lance thought about it, the more sense it made. Kogane always had detention, and that was often served under supervision of the play director to help make sets or clean up the theater. Therefore, Kogane saw a lot of the drama kids. And it was the drama kids and the nerds who were standing up for Kogane against their petition.

 

Maybe…maybe Kogane’s attacks weren’t as random as Lance had thought.

 

He didn’t share the theory with anyone but Hunk, and he only shared it with Hunk to test if he was completely crazy or if it actually had some credibility. Hunk agreed it was worth looking into, which mainly meant that Lance had to wait.

 

He kept his head down in school, but he also kept his ears open for anything about Kogane. Later that week he heard from a smug goth girl that Kogane gave someone named Steven a fat lip, and her friend had laughed and said it was what that loud mouth deserved.

 

Two weeks later, during lunch, the quarterback loudly called some poor kid a disgusting fag and dumped a lunch tray over his head. The next day he had a broken nose, two black eyes, and was missing a front tooth.  

 

Lance was sorry Kogane was suspended again. He wanted to high-five him for that one.

 

The pattern was obvious now that Lance was looking for it. He couldn’t remember any rude or hurtful comments his friends had said the days they were punched, but now that he was paying attention he realized they said a lot of mean stuff about a lot of people. The other students just didn’t always hear.

 

“Oh, my god, do you see Heather’s skirt?” Chelsea said at lunch, leaning over the table. “Is she trying to announce to whole world that she’s a slut?”

 

Lance frowned and looked at Heather for himself. The skirt might have been a little short, and he was kind of impressed a teacher hadn’t dresscoded her for it yet, but he didn’t think it deserved the criticism Chelsea was giving it. “It’s not that bad,” Lance defended. “Lay off.”

 

The table stared at him.

 

“What?” Lance asked.

 

“Nothing,” Derek said. “Uh, does anyone want to go see that new Marvel movie this weekend?”

 

It became his thing after that to start standing up for the people his friends kept judging. He wasn’t even sure why, at first. It wasn’t a conscious decision. There hadn’t been a moment where he’d thought _I need to stop my friends from insulting other students so they don’t run to Kogane and hire him to deck them_. He’d just…started to hate how harshly his friends acted towards others.

 

And yeah, the thought that the things his friends said hurt someone else’s feelings enough that they’d run to the baddest boy in school about it made his stomach twist. He didn’t like hurting people like that. He’d rather be the avenger that Kogane was, swooping in to deck a bully in return for their insults. Only he’d actually _tell_ the bully why he was punching them instead of leaving it a cryptic mystery.

 

Except, it wasn’t a mystery, not really. The nerds and geeks and drama club, all the stereotypical ‘lame kids,’ seemed to know about it. Kogane seemed to be some kind of ultimate big brother for them, dishing out justice whenever one of his little siblings was hurt.

 

Lance’s older brother Jose had done the same thing for him in elementary school more times than he could count.

 

He wouldn’t swear things got better because of him, but his friends at least stopped judging other people in front of him. That was something, at least. And by the end of April that year, Kogane hadn’t sought out any of his friends, either. There were other people he sent to the nurse’s office, but his friends were left alone.

 

Until Harry called Wide-load Martin that to his face, anyway. Then he got decked.

 

Lance could only sigh and shake his head when he saw him the next morning.

 

“What the hell is that face for?” Harry demanded.

 

“Have none of you seriously figured it out yet?” Lance asked. “Kogane only goes after you when you’ve hurt someone else’s feelings, like some kind of nerd avenger.”

 

“Are you serious?” Harry asked.

 

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Derek said. “Who would bother punching other people just because that person said something that hurt someone’s feelings?”

 

Lance shrugged. “Test it if you don’t believe me.”

 

So he did. He found Kiernan at lunch and tossed balled up napkins at him, teasing him about his poor batting skills.

 

He didn’t make it to the end of the day. He didn’t even make it until the end of lunch.

 

Kogane swooped in out of nowhere and dumped a lunch tray on Derek.

 

“I _told_ you!” Lance said, glancing from a stunned Derek to where Kogane was herding Kiernan out of the cafeteria, an arm around his shoulders.

 

Derek grimaced and pulled chunks of meatloaf out of his hair. “Alright, maybe you’re on to something.”

 

“No wonder our petition didn’t get anywhere,” Chelsea said. She handed Derek a wad of napkins.

 

 _That_ was when there was a noticeable change in the student body. Lance and his friends spread the word to other common victims of Kogane, and like a switch they stopped bad-mouthing other students. They didn’t become friends; it was more of a tense wall of silence between them. But Kogane went the rest of the year without sending anyone else to the nurse.

 

Lance did attribute that miracle to his own actions.

 

The last week of school, when Lance was spending study hall cleaning out his locker, Kogane appeared next to him.

 

Lance shrieked and jumped back, covering his face. “Please don’t hit me!”

 

Kogane chuckled. “I wasn’t going to, I swear.”

 

Lance blinked and lowered his hands. “Really?”

 

Kogane leaned back against the lockers, crossing his arms. “Really. I wanted to thank you, actually.”

 

The words did not compute for several long seconds. “Really?” he repeated.

 

 Kogane nodded. “Your friends liked to pick on a lot of my friends. But my friends didn’t know how to stand up for themselves.”

 

“And that’s where you came in,” Lance said. “The little avenger.”

 

He raised a brow at Lance. “Is that what you call me?”

 

Lance shrugged. “What you do is literally the definition of avenging.”

 

Kogane chuckled again. “I guess it fits.”

 

“Just one question, though,” Lance said. “Why didn’t you ever say anything when doing your avenging thing? Like, things could have changed a lot sooner if you’d said _why_ you were punching people.”

 

The slightest shade of pink dusted Kogane’s cheeks. “Ah. I’m. Really bad with words, usually. Especially when I’m mad. And when one of my friends comes to me crying, I get really mad. And I guess I thought it was obvious? The first few times I did it, the asshole definitely knew why I was decking him.”

 

“Are you like friends with the entire non-athlete population of the school?” Lance asked. He’d thought Kogane didn’t have _any_ friends.

 

Kogane shook his head. “I’m friends with a couple people, and I decked a few people for the kids in the drama club, and word kind of spread. What else was I supposed to do when people came crying to me? And it just…makes me furious that other people can be so careless with their words. Like what they say doesn’t mean anything, and the people they talk about don’t have feelings.”

 

“I get it, man,” Lance said softly. He went back to cleaning out his locker, digging out long lost homework assignments and dumping them in the trash bin next to him. “Why do you think I got my friends to stop doing it?”

 

“To be honest I thought you were trying to save your own face,” Kogane said bluntly.

 

“Ouch, man,” Lance said with a laugh.

 

Kogane shrugged, unapologetic. “Whatever the reason was, my friends and all their friends have been a lot happier these last few weeks. And my brother is impressed I went so long without getting detention.”

 

“Oh, that’s another thing,” Lance said, standing up straight and putting his hands on his hips. “How the hell did you get away with punching so many people without getting expelled?”

 

“My brother is dating the principal’s daughter,” Kogane said.

 

Lance blinked. Processed. And then burst out laughing. A full on, doubled at the knees, belly-aching laugh. A teacher had to poke their head of their door and shush him.

 

Lanced wiped away a few tears. “Oh my god. That’s beautiful, I can’t believe it.”

 

The pink dusting was back on Kogane’s cheeks. “Can you just accept my thanks so I can go?”

 

“Dude, you totally don’t have to thank me for getting my friends to not be dicks,” Lance said. “That’s just, like, the moral thing to do.”

 

“Well maybe some of us are grateful, all the same,” Kogane said.

 

“Then you’re welcome, I guess.”

 

Kogane nodded and pushed himself off the lockers. “Have a good summer, Sanchez.”

 

“You too, Kogane,” Lance said.

 

Keith walked off, offering a half-hearted wave and shoving his hands in his pockets.

 

Lance watched until he turned the corner, and then he went back to cleaning out his locker in what little time he had left of study hall. He couldn’t stop smiling the entire time.

 

Kogane might still be a bad boy, he might still have a viscous right hook capable of hospitalizing people, but he wasn’t actually that bad. He was kind of like that motorcycle gang that stood guard outside of kid’s houses. Rough around the edges, but a big ol’ softie on the inside.

 

And that constant blushing? Freaking adorable.

 

Lance froze, smushed vocabulary book slipping through his fingers to clunk at the bottom of his locker.

 

Did he just think ‘Adorable’ and ‘Kogane’ in the same thought?

 

Shit. He did. Kogane had the sensitive bad boy thing going on and Lance was _weak_.

 

He groaned and stuffed his head in his locker. “I’m _doomed_.”

 


End file.
